


In Medias Res

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Series: Qui Habitat [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Pegasus Galaxy, ori don't lose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 17:16:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20139094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: From a galaxy away in Pegasus, the Ori assault on the Milky Way is a puzzle before it's a problem. The fall of Earth is inconceivable until it's inevitable. Atlantis is a sanctuary until it's a target.  John Sheppard is inconsequential to the war's progress until he is left in command of prosecuting it.





	In Medias Res

**Author's Note:**

> This is the keystone to the 2019 revamp of a story begun in 2007. It explains what's gone on and where everything stands by the time the main story begins and can serve as a summary of all of the other side stories. It's a little more downbeat than the main story, but hopefully not without reprieves.

The first additions are essentially paperwork ones; _Daedalus_ drops off seriously wounded SG-team members who've been evacuated from conflicts in the Milky Way and Atlantis adds them for accounting purposes and so the SGC can keep track of who is where. Most of them are residing in Medical's infirmary and none of them are cleared for any duties and so while yes, they now have half a dozen USAF officers and nine NCOs, neither John nor Lorne feel any less isolated in a battalion full of marines. 

The infirmary's military population never really drops below a dozen; the ones who get RTD'ed are replaced by new wounded on the next port call. John makes an effort to learn names and make regular visits and be a CO in more than name even though a few of them probably outrank him based on time in grade. Lying in a hospital bed is boring as hell and there's no cable TV in Pegasus and the marines aren't going to be eager to chat up field grade Air Force officers. John's never really been a part of the Stargate Program despite actually having been assigned to it for more than four years, so he doesn't really know anyone or much of the culture and this is a chance to change that and to get a better sense of what's actually going on on the ground back in the Milky Way. He doesn't think about the likelihood of his new acquaintanceships being short-term on account of the rapidly rising mortality rate of the gate teams. 

Medical isn't used to dealing with long-term care -- before there were Ori, anyone seriously ill or gravely wounded got evacuated back to Earth. But now there is a hospital ward getting built next to the infirmary and the SGC is going to send them equipment and medical personnel of species John's not paying too close attention to beyond the fact that both Carson and Yoni look less beleaguered once they show up. 

Over in Little Tripoli, the troubles at home mean battalion staff meetings become a lot more about where they can pimp the marines out for food. They're not getting regular resupply of anything not shelf-stable from Earth anymore and while they've always traded for fruits and vegetables, they have to start working on meat and everything else that used to arrive in freezer chests. It's a not-straightforward process because they need to find multiple sources of everything -- most agrarian worlds in Pegasus just don't have enough of anything to provision Atlantis on their own. Biology and Life Sciences wind up making field trips to some of their more trusted allies to see if they can raise their own crops as tenant farmers. John makes jokes with Elizabeth about the possibility of reliving the first year's halls full of tomato plants, but it's not completely off the table and, in fact, Biology wants the marines to clear out a building in B-7 to try large-scale hydroponic farming of food plants again. 

Things back in the Milky Way go to hell a lot faster after July, when the Ori rebuild the supergate and start sending their armies through. Planets and people fall to the Ori at a rate that John knows the SGC can't check and the new hospital ward fills up because _Daedalus_ and _Odyssey_ are dropping off a dozen casualties at a time and those are only the ones who don't stay aboard because they'll be able to perform their duties after the six week round trip. 

When the news reaches Atlantis about the attacks on Beijing and Dhaka, it's a shock and not a surprise. Nor, really, is the decision to keep Atlantis's forces in Pegasus instead of shipping them back to Earth to defend the planet. The order goes over like a fart in an elevator in Little Tripoli and John sympathizes even as he has to do what he can to keep the frustration and rage from boiling over. His ability to do so -- and his officers' ability to do so -- waxes and wanes. As far as the SGC goes, Atlantis has changed from frontier outpost to contingency plan and he can't tell his men that they have to stay put in case the good guys don't win.

The 'if' is becoming a 'when,' although nobody speaks the words aloud. The Milky Way is falling to the Ori and the only real question left is whether Earth can hold out long enough for help to come from somewhere because they won't be able to keep the Ori at bay forever on their own. The SGC asks for Rodney to go back to run their science division. John thinks it's a good idea too late, like all of the SGC's better ideas. This isn't a war they're going to win by out-shooting anyone and they might as well see what the geek squad can do; Rodney's done a lot more with a lot less. 

In January, Little Tripoli holds funerals for three men who could not be saved by either _Odyssey_'s surgeons or Atlantis's and John is surprised at how deeply he feels the losses. These were not men who died following his orders and that they died under his command is a bureaucratic technicality. But they died in Atlantis nonetheless and it guts him a little that these men are not only so far from home, but also so far from everyone they knew and the only eulogy Atlantis can offer is that they died honorably and in service of a just cause. 

Pegasus doesn't stop being dangerous just because the Ori are invading the Milky Way first. The Wraith are hungrier than usual, the Genii are trying to start a passive-aggressive trade war by proxy, Lieutenant Murray is still getting chased off planets by pointy sticks, and John doesn't mean to get his team kidnapped by the local version of the Clan of the Cave Bear. Eriksson's entire platoon comes back from a mission with food poisoning, which would be bad enough, but it was a trade mission _for food_ and they don't know what the marines ate or whether any of it got brought back to Atlantis. Once upon a time, they'd have chucked the whole lot of it, but now they wind up guinea-pigging until they realize it's the grapes that are somehow slightly toxic only to Earth people. The Ipetians help them offload several hundred pounds of grapes to people who won't get sick from them; what they get in return isn't all useful or comestible, but it can probably be traded for something that is. 

Rodney comes back to them as an evacuee, one of many; the SGC is going into a more protective stance. Atlantis is now deemed safer than Earth for noncombatant essential personnel and the SGC can't spare the manpower to protect a second planet as an alpha site. John spends a long afternoon in Lorne's office trying to figure out what to do with the nine military men and two women who are currently residing in Atlantis's hospital ward. In the past, they've shipped the wounded back to Earth once they were stable so that they could recuperate at home. Now, however, the Ori blockade of Earth has made that nearly impossible: the cloaked _Apollo_ is inside the blockade and both _Odyssey_ and _Daedalus_ are outside and the only safe or reliable way on or off the planet is through the stargate itself. Whoever's here is likely to be here until the Ori are driven away from Earth, be that next week or next year. (Or never, but John can't even imagine that as a possibility.) Four of the wounded are one Medical Board review away from being retired and one is essentially still alive only because the SGC hasn't told them whether Lieutenant Colonel Behari has a living will. 

The upshot is that for the first time in its history, Atlantis's military element has a dedicated headquarters staff as opposed to the captains dual-hatting. Radner is more than thrilled to give up personnel and information duties entirely; he'd been S-1 and S-6 entirely because he was the one who'd already been in Atlantis when everyone else had arrived and Lieutenant Colonel Greisz (second degree burns, 60% hearing loss in left ear) would rather be doing paperwork than lying around between PT sessions. Hanzis (S-2 intelligence) and Polito (S-3 operations and training) get assistants who outrank them, but as Major Ngo (open humerus fracture, shattered collarbone) points out to John, you don't last long in the Stargate Program if your dignity is easily bruised. Ngo ends up in charge of the S-2 shop anyway after Hanzis gets himself thrown in the brig for assault. The others are assigned various Headquarters and Service jobs, although John has to marvel at how Evan starts out with both an E-7 and an O-3 assigned to him and manages to rid himself of both in re-taskings that can't be argued with on the basis of practicality. 

"With all due respect, sir," Radner tells John, "this is what happens when you let him forge your paperwork for four years." 

The next time _Odyssey_ is in, she brings refugees who don't need to be hospitalized first. The ship evacuated two planets that had been used as remote scientific research bases; Rodney and Zelenka get an extra twenty-seven scientists and John now has two platoons of airmen to figure out what to do with. They're all SFs and John rejects the Marines' suggestion that they be absorbed within the battalion's ranks and instead asks Major Lehman, now far enough in his rehab cycle to be an outpatient, to take temporary command. 

"I think we can turn most of the city security details over to the SFs once they're settled," John thinks out loud to Lorne. "Base security is what they're supposed to be doing and the marines are overtasked as it is."

"I'm sure the marines will be happy to hand off playing hall monitor for the scientists," Lorne says with a frown. "But I don't think they are giving up the gateroom without a fight."

The SFs in question have been guarding scientists on various planets for years; they can handle the gateroom. But John ends up letting the marines keep it because the Three Stooges fought dirty and and came prepared to counter every single argument and not make it seem like inter-service rivalry. Which it undoubtedly is. But he does wrangle out a few concessions in other areas that will probably help keep the peace in Little Tripoli down the line. 

There are updates and occasionally more refugees and more occasionally bad news. He doesn't even know what to think about Rodney's sister. 

The SFs grow from two platoons to four by the end of the year, but Lehman goes back into the rotation of gate team officers fighting in the Milky Way and they turn the SF company over to the newly arrived Captain Sato. Who looks all of twelve but is apparently twenty-seven and doesn't have any trouble with the marines after she judo throws one of the Galarans halfway across the commissary for being too forward. The incident also fills up her social calendar; she finds a sparring partner in Doctor Clayton and Lorne reports that the marine captains are over themselves and are now being friendly. 

The next bit of good news they get is that Staff Sergeant Reletti, whom they'd been told had been killed, is in fact alive and well enough to pilot the control chair in Antarctica. Reletti's not the only former Atlantis marine fighting the Ori from up close, but he's the one John spent the most time with by a wide margin. Including that day down in Atlantis's control room showing him how to use the chair in case of emergencies. That sort of putting your brain on display and sharing that kind of intimate connection to Atlantis and her power -- and the migraine that comes with it -- is a bond that exists outside the chain of command. John's not wholly sure he understands how the chair here works and he's pretty sure he didn't convey as much as he needed to as well as he needed to for Reletti to get from him what he'll need to do in Antarctica, but he hopes it's enough. 

Atlantis's previously-existing-only-on-paper Alpha Company turns up in the middle of the night, ending one of the longest running jokes in Little Tripoli and startling the crap out of all of them. It's a miracle that is still tainted by the nightmare alternative -- what the fuck is going on back home that Armstrong had orders to kill civilians rather than let them fall into Ori hands? -- although they try to focus on the miracle part. And on the logistics. Little Tripoli stopped expecting A Company to join them years ago because the SGC had an unlimited list of excuses before there was a war with the Ori. Getting an extra eighty marines squared away and settled when they have less of everything to go around isn't easy, but Marines Make Do ('as opposed to the Air Force' remains unstated). 

John asks Elizabeth not to mention Armstrong's mooted burden to anyone else; Lorne is the only other person who knows. The scientists Alpha brought with them don't know what Armstrong had been ordered to do and there's nothing good that comes from them finding out. There's nothing good that comes from Rodney finding out, either, because of his sister. 

They hear about the Antarctica strike in a surprise databurst -- the SGC isn't at the Mountain anymore, so a databurst has to be ricocheted between half a dozen places to be able to get to Atlantis. The civilian side is giddy with hope; the drone weapons launched from Antarctica did a lot of damage, enough to force the Ori to retreat from their blockade of Earth and right into the waiting _Odyssey_'s and _Daedalus_'s fields of fire. Little Tripoli is far more measured because they understand the doctrine behind the move and don't know if the SGC has done enough to weaken the Ori so that the counterstrike is survivable. 

There's no news for a month after that, which isn't so strange -- most of their news for the last year has come via _Odyssey_ or _Daedalus_ and both ships are presumably tied up fighting the Ori. John's got enough to do in Pegasus to let his fears for Earth simmer on the back burner and sometimes he feels bad about not being more preoccupied by what's going on back in the Milky Way than he is. But his life is here now and he has a few hundred men (and six women) who rely on his guidance to protect a growing city and the burden of command sits more squarely on him now than it ever has before. He was in Antarctica because he'd abandoned his responsibilities to go be a hero and now he's here because of Antarctica. And while, yeah, a part of him wants to tell everyone in Little Tripoli to gear up 'cuz they're going home to fight the Ori, the rest of him has finally learned the lesson the Air Force had tried to teach him. He has a job to do here and people who need him to do that job and he has to trust that there are other people who can do the job there. 

The job here currently involves negotiations with Rodney, who has found himself in the unenvious position of having to speak for Doctor Volnik, Atlantis's number one candidate to sacrifice to the Wraith. Biomedical Engineering failed to follow standard procedures for performing tests involving radiation, which is neither a surprise nor historically a big deal. Over the years, the various divisions have settled into their habits and the marines have chosen their battles and they chose not to be fussy about the 50-hour warning required for using radiation for anything more exciting than microwaving food. But the marines aren't the ones patrolling the hallways anymore and Captain Sato has, it seems, chosen this particular fight. Volnik being Volnik, things escalated and while sorting out military-Science disagreements has been something Zelenka and Lorne have become good at, this particular instance is high-profile enough that it has to be John and Rodney in their command capacities. John's heard the story from Sato and also from Lorne, who still did the legwork of finding out how much of a ruckus this is causing in Science by talking to Zelenka.

Rodney, who despises Volnik, is more concerned about this being a harbinger of a widespread crackdown on _de jure_ versus _de facto_ regulations, almost all of which have been in place since the initial expedition, than about the particulars. Volnik is a misogynist and Sato being a woman didn't not factor into it, but it didn't factor into it in ways that will complicate the resolution, which means that they can treat this like any other BME-military conflict and make it go away without it turning into more of a public spectacle than it already has been. They eventually agree that the regs are long overdue for an overhaul, especially with all of the new personnel arriving, and that Sato will have a seat at the table for the new version because it's her people who will be enforcing them. 

John accepts the settlement thinking that he and Rodney are on the same wavelength, something that hasn't been as intuitive since Rodney's return as it once had been. They're not the same men they once were, perhaps, or maybe time feels like it moves at different speeds here and on Earth. Whatever it is, it's gone a week later when Rodney takes on all of Little Tripoli, including John. It starts when a mission plan for Science gets rejected by Polito because of logistics and, instead of redoing it to fit the stated parameters John knows every department head in Science has written down somewhere, Rodney hands the _same proposal_ to Lorne and complains that Polito's being obstructionist again. Lorne tells Rodney that Polito is right, the manifest is too heavy, and he's not going to do anything about it. At which point Rodney chases down John, who tells Rodney the same thing with an added sidebar about going over people's heads when he doesn't get his way. If Rodney had come to him first and explained why he needed to do this mission as-written, they might have been able to work this out. But John can't kneecap his subordinates and he doesn't feel generous enough to compromise when Rodney's not even trying to do the same. 

It's an argument that is forgotten because they get a databurst from Earth. They get _the_ databurst from Earth, the one they've been dreading but also have sort of also been expecting. 

Earth has fallen to the Ori. 

It takes Rodney and Zelenka the better part of a day to unpack the message, so they have their first command staff meeting without knowing what it says -- and without Rodney and Zelenka. The brutal fact of it is that almost nothing changes in the city -- they've essentially been cut off from Earth for more than a year, since the SGC bugged out of NORAD and the Ori blockade kept _Odyssey_ and _Daedalus_ from their home port. They don't know if either ship or _Apollo_ is still flying, in which case they might be cut off for real. 

There's not much they can do and little they can plan for until they know what's in the compressed message. John can say that they'll switch to a more robust defensive protocol in the gateroom, but there's little point in asking for more remote sensors to be turned on -- Zelenka has had everything they are comfortable activating already on since the first time the Ori built a supergate. More won't buy them time and it may draw the Wraith. 

Back when they found out about the bombings of Beijing and Dkaha, they gathered the city in groups to break the news. But that was a long time ago in more ways than one and so Elizabeth just makes a city-wide announcement that they have received the signal that indicates Earth's submission to the Ori and details will be made available on the city's announcement website once they have them. 

Once they have the details, John is grateful that hours have passed and the worst of the shock is over. The Ori counterstrike that forced Earth's surrender first destroyed the SGC in all but name and then came for everyone else. Submission was the only alternative to annihilation. O'Neill and Landry were killed in the initial wave along with dozens of others; the SGC lives on as a scattered resistance (rebellion?) led by Cam Mitchell and Sam Carter and comprised of whoever happened to be off-world when the Ori struck. _Apollo_ is destroyed, _Odyssey_ banged up but intact and nursing her wounds in orbit around an uninhabited world, and _Daedalus_ was on the other side of the galaxy at the time, flying Carter to try to beg some people called the Nox for help to no avail. Atlantis should hopefully expect one or both ships in the next few months, bearing refugees and whatever they can scrounge in terms of weapons and food. 

Little Tripoli does not spasm in anger as they did before; they are done with the pouting and are ready to face the universe as the last free forces of Earth. 

_Odyssey_ shows up first. 'Banged up' is somewhat of an understatement, but she's got structural integrity and they've been able to repair some of the interior damage while in hyperspace. She comes bearing more than a hundred fifty refugees, not all of whom will be staying in Atlantis, but between that and the crew and Mitchell's gang of pirates, it's a lot of mouths to feed for the duration. They've cleaned up and cleaned out a building they can use as a dormitory, but beds are a different story. Same with the barracks. Teyla offers everyone who is comfortable with camping the option of staying with the Athosians on the mainland and quite a few take her up on the offer. About a third of the refugees are from Earth and the rest are from other parts of the Milky Way, people the SGC had offered sanctuary to before they'd started needing it themselves. 

"Most of the Tauri are going to be aboard _Daedalus_," Mitchell explains. It doesn't disappoint John as much as it used to that people from Earth aren't actually called Earthlings, but he does note that it wasn't 'our people' or anything like. Maybe when you've been spending as much time off-world as Cam has the last couple of years, 'our people' means something else. "They're trying to scoop up everyone we evac'ed from Antarctica who hasn't been killed yet and see if we can find anyone else the Ori didn't find first."

It's a three-week journey to Pegasus, plus or minus a day or two depending where in the Milky Way you leave from, and most of the newcomers have lost the shockiness and fatigue of the recently rescued. But Mitchell still looks like crap and they're on good enough terms that John can say so.

"We lost Landry and O'Neill and sixty-four more SG people in an afternoon," Mitchell says, shaking his head. "And more than that when the Orici sent the Cormin in to make sure there was nothing left. We lost the goddamned _planet_. I got voices in my head that sometimes sound like O'Neill and sometimes sound like Jackson and they're both telling me it's not my fault, but it sure as fuck feels like it."

John's not the kind of hypocrite to tell him he should stow the guilt because it isn't warranted, so instead he tells Mitchell to go down to Medical if he needs to but the canteen's got hot food if he needs that more. "We've got this," he says, gesturing to the people and things still being beamed down from _Odyssey_. 

Mitchell nods, pats him on the bicep, and then disappears into the swarm of people. John's not surprised to see him fifteen minutes later, arm around a distraught guy in ragged clothes as he leans in to talk quietly over the noise. 

They're skipping the usual medical precautions because the trip here was essentially a three-week quarantine and whatever was going to present itself already would have, so it's mostly sorting and John leaves it to those whose job it is to figure it out. Elizabeth's mingling and welcoming people to Atlantis and John figures he should do the same with his new people, so he takes a deep breath and summons up some good humor and finds where Armstrong has been herding those in uniform. Charlie Ngo, crutches on the floor behind him, is sitting with a tablet checking people in while being surrounded by a rainbow of camouflage. They are getting a Peruvian, three Canadians, and an Australian among the new arrivals. 

"How's the cammie collecting going, Major?" John asks as he gets close enough not to shout. The new arrivals look up because even if they don't know what he looks like and he's not wearing anything with rank on it, the words say enough. A few try to stand up and he waves them back down. 

"We're missing two airmen, our Peruvian, and the three Army gents, sir," Charlie reports with a grin. "Who are presumably trying to flee back to the Milky Way now that they've found out we're throwing them to Uncle Sam's Misguideds." 

Charlie's a good egg and everyone has enjoyed having him in Atlantis. Possibly Lorne most of all because it's someone else military he can hang out with; being near the top of the food chain makes it hard to find people with similar life experience to socialize with. John's got his team, but the makeup of Evan’s means that it's Safir or nothing and Yoni's sometimes a lot of work. 

The three soldiers aren't trying to get themselves thrown back to the Ori, so they say, but they end up being among the last teleported down and so Ngo gets to refine his comedy bit for a while. 

The absorption of the new personnel will be gradual, but stowing them and what they came with is the matter of a day's work. The next several are spent in conference rooms listening to Mitchell, Colonel Ellis, and Major Dimitrakos, _Odyssey_'s intel officer, explain in detail what's happened, what is happening, and what is likely to happen in a galaxy that belongs to the Ori. It's bad news on top of worse news on top of a glimmer of hope that they can figure out a way to defeat the Ori before it's too late. The SG people think there's a possibility that the Ori decide to hold Earth as an occupied planet without enforcing full compliance in terms of Ori worship, that it might be more important to them to just neutralize Earth while they reorder the rest of the galaxy. It's a shitty best option, but it's better to contemplate that as an outcome than to think about Earth as a barren warzone littered with billions of corpses while the remnant kneel in prostration to the Ori. 

"We need to have something to fight for," Mitchell says when it's just him and John and John asks him how likely this best case is. "This rebellion is going to be one nonstop suicide mission and how do we ask anyone to do that without the hope that there are people to save? That maybe you won't die in vain because there are people in that galaxy waiting for someone to rescue them?" 

There is talk about sending some of the marines back aboard _Odyssey_ to help out; Atlantis got by with a platoon the first year and now they've got a dozen times that counting everybody. But the talk doesn't get far because a thousand more fighting men won't help against the Ori and so the hundred Atlantis could offer would do nothing. Besides, there will be more work for them here with the refugees and that's before the Ori finish what they are doing and turn their eyes toward Pegasus. 

The refugees are a different problem, one that John can't completely dump in Elizabeth's and Teyla's laps. The Atlantis Expedition was never meant to be a community with a common purpose beyond furthering science and even after they started adopting stray Pegasus natives, the situation didn't much change. They don't have a real internal economy, they don't have the means to care for the very young or very old, they don't have a very developed society at all and that had been completely fine when Atlantis was a work environment. But now Atlantis is something else and they have to think about what that something else will be and the rules by how it will function. They joke about G-2 actually being essential to Atlantis's mission for the first time, but the social scientists are the ones who do the heavy lifting when it comes to turning Atlantis into a real place and not just a frontier outpost. 

M9J-442 isn't exactly the first place John would consider for a possible remote community for refugees -- the Marines call it Mars for a reason and that reason doesn't always lose the fight to what Atlantis's laundries use for soap. 

"All of you spent time in a place where fine dust gets into everything," he tells the battalion staff officers seated around Lorne's conference table. "Why are you choosing another one?" 

The answer is that it's in a completely uninhabited solar system and so the Wraith have had no reason to visit and, once you get past the sea of red dust, it's got ideal habitable conditions in proximity to the stargate.

Now that they've scouted a site, Little Tripoli is not going to be involved in the details of what is going to happen there beyond that there will need to be a marine platoon there at all times for security. The work will be done by refugees supervised by engineers and botanists and John's happy to call it good and move on. 

_Daedalus_ shows up on a Wednesday night and John's not all that surprised to see Reletti in the first wave. Mitchell had told them that he'd survived the evacuation from Antarctica and the planet-hopping that followed and John knows Caldwell would do them the favor of putting returning Atlantis personnel on the first trip. Reletti looks like he's in pain and pretending he's not, which gets Lorne to mutter about nothing changing. But it's clear as day a lot has changed with Reletti and that, like Cam Mitchell, being an integral part of a planetary defense that failed isn't something you get over easily. Or at all. 

Evan sees the fragility, too, and sends Reletti down to Medical on the pretense that he needs his medical files updated. Then he radios Safir to tell him he's got a special delivery and John can chuckle at his wince as he's on the receiving end of a cranky rejoinder. 

Mitchell and Carter haven't seen each other in a while, possibly since before the Ori counterstrike, and their reunion is emotional. They are all that's left of SG-1, all that's left of the SGC's command structure, and now they are the leaders of the resistance movement for the galaxy. John can see the weight of it all on both of them and says as much to Elizabeth, who gives him a funny look. 

"Go polish your bathroom mirror," she tells him when he asks her why. "Cam Mitchell's not the only Lost Boy who's left Neverland." 

John appreciates that he's had to do a little bit of growing-the-fuck-up over the last few years, but he's also pretty sure nobody would confuse him with an adult yet. 

The Atlantis reunion extends beyond just Mitchell and Carter, of course. This is the first time Caldwell and Ellis, the two surviving battleship commanders, have seen each other in person for years and it emphasizes just how much running around everyone in the Milky Way has been doing. The discussions and debriefings take place in the the small auditorium in Little Tripoli the senior officers use to scare the lieutenants with nightmare command decisions in the name of PME and the coincidence escapes nobody in uniform. The lieutenants aren't present for this, though, just battalion staff officers, the civilian leadership, and Reletti, who was in the chair for the big events and is the only one around who has any concrete knowledge of what happened in Antarctica between the first strike and the evacuation. 

There is less talking about what happened and more talking about what happens now, both here in Atlantis and back in their home galaxy. Ellis and Caldwell are both the senior officers present, but they are willing -- for the time being -- to defer to Carter and Mitchell in terms of strategy. John's role as commander in Atlantis is mostly as support and rear echelon, except for the fact that he's not sitting in some cushy office far from the front line and still has a separate war on his hands. What Atlantis can provide to those fighting the Ori has to be balanced against what they need to fight the Wraith and to prepare for when the Ori turn their eyes to Pegasus. 

Atlantis is too far from the Milky Way to serve as a port the ships return to after missions, but it is now the only home for any of them and the plans they make reflect that. Both ships will take turns raiding Earth for supplies needed in Atlantis -- and for items that they do not want in the hands of an Ori-controlled planet. Carter and Mitchell will largely be continuing what they started to do after the Antarctica strike: Carter and a guy named Jonas Quinn lead teams to sabotage or steal Ori technology and Mitchell's gang more or less does the same with people. Nobody knows enough about how the new Ori order will shake out to be able to plot to overthrow it, so all they can do right now is acquire tech, intel, refugees, and toilet paper. 

Three weeks after _Daedalus_ arrived, the conferences are no longer daily and John is sitting outside on one of the balconies nobody but Lorne knows to look for him doing the official business he's been able to backburner but no longer can. They don't have to do SGC paperwork anymore, but they still have their own shit to keep track of and Lorne has made it very clear that he is not about to let Little Tripoli go all _Lord of the Flies_ as far as administrative order goes and nobody's fool enough to test him on this. But John's been trapped indoors in a close loop of discussions and meetings and he just wants a little time on his own where he can hear nobody's voices save Atlantis's quite murmur and if that means dragging his laptop up to his Sulking Tower (per Rodney, who has no idea where said tower is) to write memos and sign off on exercises, so be it. He stays out there even after his laptop dies and just enjoys the sun on his face without the burdens and fears that await him inside. 

There's a noise behind him and he turns to see Teyla. She doesn't come see him in contexts like this very often and he sits up and gestures for her to sit down. 

"Major Lorne directed me here to you," she explains as she does. 

"I'd kinda figured that," he tells her. "I still don't know where he put the tracker." He makes a show of checking his arm and shirt and it makes her smile, which is his intent. 

Teyla wants to talk to him about Ronon, specifically about bringing him into her work with the refugees. Ronon's restless, which they both know, especially with John's and Rodney's responsibilities making off-world missions less of a priority and more of something that can be delegated when so little else can. Ronon's not sitting on his hands and has things to fill his time, mostly serving as a planetary guide and instructor for the marines and also providing assistance to the linguists studying the various Pegasus languages because he can read and speak half a dozen of them and identify several more. But he's restless nonetheless. 

"Do you think he'd go along with it?" John asks, curious. Ronon's deeply ambivalent about his own refugee status because of how he survived the Wraith's destruction of Sateda; he doesn't visit the Satedan community on Malposar despite knowing people there. It took Teyla forever to get him to even go to the mainland and meet her own people. 

"I think it would benefit him immensely," she says, tilting her head to allow that that is not the answer to his question. "The refugees from your galaxy... he has more in common with them, perhaps, than with those who have fled the Wraith here." 

He sees where she's going with this -- Sateda was an advanced civilization closer to what she knows of Earth than the typical Pegasus community and Ronon was someone who'd never had to be responsible for his own survival until the Wraith came, unlike the way most of Pegasus lives a subsistence-level existence. It's self-deprecating to a degree he doesn't like -- Teyla is the most remarkable and impressive woman he's ever known -- but he can appreciate the process. He tells her to do whatever she feels is best and if she needs help bullying Ronon into something, he's game. 

The next morning, he stumbles into a different kind of personnel discussion. Polito's in Lorne's office when John saunters in and Matt's there to talk to both him and Lorne about Reletti. Who is apparently quietly failing to adapt to life back in Atlantis. Polito is vague on the details of some of the reportage, but it's for the right reasons: he presumably got almost all of it from his first sergeant and Backman's not going to be giving up NCO business unless he has to. But the bottom line is that Reletti is no longer the round peg in the round hole he'd been when he'd separated and now they have to decide whether to find a better-fitting hole or get a hammer. 

"It's not a discipline problem," Polito emphasizes. "And I don't like the idea of punishing him for having spent the last year living in a nightmare. But that nightmare's made him pretty hard to reach. We put him back in his old billet because we thought it would be easier for him to be in familiar surroundings and that's not working. It's possibly making things worse." 

Polito's suggestions for what to do are interesting: either a TDY to "give him a different environment to unfuck himself in" or go ahead and do what the Ori interrupted: commission him as a lieutenant and let the post-traumatic stress battle with the stress of being a junior officer and see which wins. There's no decision to be made right away, but now it's out in the open and the next move will be John's. He talks it over a little with Evan after Polito leaves; they both agree that a commission is a good idea but not right now and that they are going to have to get creative because most of the obvious solutions have long term consequences. 

John's in the control room that afternoon to go over some of the long-range sensor changes Zelenka has suggested when he can hear shouting and then see a phalanx of SFs escorting an irate Doctor Patel across the gate room floor toward Medical's part of the world. Patel's holding a cloth to his forehead and yelling about assault charges and John turns to Lieutenant Carlson to ask what the hell is going on. The SFs aren't always keen on keeping the gateroom officer up to date and there have been a few sit-downs because of that, but Carlson is able to tell him that Chemistry and Pharmacology got into it again. That Carlson, who is from Alpha Company and thus one of the newest lieutenants, can do so with a tired sigh speaks ably to how often this particular pissing match takes place. Carson and Rodney are both too stubborn and too protective of their people to make any kind of lasting peace stick, so the rest of them are left to ride it out and make up drinking games. 

But the incident does give him an idea for what to do about Reletti and so once he's done nodding dumbly at what Zelenka is proposing -- they both know he understands almost none of it, but process is procedure -- he heads back to Little Tripoli and Charlie Company's headquarters. 

"I'd like to schedule a mission for Major Lorne's team," John tells Polito in front of witnesses. "Four days on the mainland, something plausible for that time duration."

This isn't the first time he's shown up to get Polito, the battalion's operations and training officer, to make up a mission to get someone out of the city to defuse a situation. Sometimes it's Rodney and sometimes it's one of the marine platoons, but more than sometimes it's Yoni Safir and everyone in Little Tripoli knows that. Polito knows that, too, but the smile on his face as he invites John into his office has nothing to do with past events. 

"Does Doc know he's taking one for the team, sir?" Polito asks as he starts tapping away on his laptop to bring up the relevant program. 

"Doctor Safir took the Hippocratic Oath and he's supposed to be willing to go to great lengths to save patients," John replies with an airy wave. "Besides, it's not like he can complain we're sullying his spotless reputation." 

Yoni will be pissed for the length of time it takes to explain the situation to him, John thinks. Evan, on the other hand, will be grumpy until departure. John didn't miss that a training exercise wasn't on the list of options he had proffered earlier. Evan hasn't taken his team anywhere since Reletti's return, not even to the range or to his office for a meeting, because he's got too much to do. And he's got too much to do because he is absolutely terrible at delegating anything important or even semi-important. 

"And while we're at it, do we know if Captain Vega is up to shadowing Major Lorne for a few hours a day?" John realizes after he asked the question that it's probably a non sequitur to Polito, but he can see the moment Matt makes the connection. 

Vega came in as one of the injured aboard _Odyssey_ and she's supposed to go out with whichever ship comes back first after her medical clearance, but in the meanwhile she's got two broken ankles and a lot of shrapnel wounds and Carson has already obliquely asked if there is something she can do in Little Tripoli so she'll stop driving the nurses crazy. 

"Up for day release from Medical, probably, sir," Polito answers as he skims whatever's on his screen. "Up for making sure the Major doesn't give her a coloring book and crayons and tell her not to bother him, that's unknown." 

Lorne has not yet given anyone a coloring book, but he _has_ resorted to giving temporary assistants trivial tasks to get them to ask for reassignment.

"If she's taking on Nurse Tomita out of boredom, I think she can handle Major Lorne." 

Marine officers on the gimp are an entirely different class of difficult than injured Air Force officers. 

Evan takes the news of both his imminent departure and his newest assistant as poorly as anticipated, but he can't sabotage either this time around and John tries not to be smug in victory and probably doesn't succeed. Vega holds the fort without incident and Lorne comes back the kind of exhausted that is curable by sleep and not the bone-weary he'd been before. Reletti isn't magically his old self, but scuttlebutt says that he's wound a little less tightly and he'll probably be okay enough in a while. 

_Odyssey_ returns with refugees, wounded, lots of SGC-marked materiel crates including seventeen drone weapons, and what is possibly the entire inventory of a Costco. 

"Hey, look, ketchup _and_ drone weapons," John says with mock glee as he and Lorne watch the pallets appear out of thin air and then disappear after being loaded on to trolleys by marines. "It's a Christmas miracle!" 

The drone weapons are from Antarctica; they were buried under literal tons of ice after the counterstrike and needed to be teleported out of the rubble. There's a lot of other stuff that has been rescued out of the destroyed base, but the weapons are by far the most important. Several of them need repairs and John will have to sit in the chair at some point to make sure they are all functional and usable by Atlantis; he's not looking forward to it but won't put it off. 

This becomes the pattern of the port calls with some variety in the types of weapons and people who turn up. A surprising number of the latter are essentially kidnappings of opportunity: Mitchell and Carter and their teams beam into hospitals or armories or labs and tag people for teleportation as well as the targeted items. They wind up with a few doctors and nurses and scientists, but also cleaning staff and shelf stockers. It's not just civilians: Mitchell ends up liberating a handful of US Army soldiers during a raid on an armory and a similar raid in Toulon gets them a bunch of French sailors, four of whom turn out to be members of the Commando Hubert. John doesn't know how Mitchell's people can sort out the oppressed from the Ori converts or what they do to the latter, but none of them end up in Atlantis and he's comfortable not asking for methodology. He's aware that the actions of the resistance aren't all happy liberations and quickly dispatched bad guys, but Mitchell can still look him in the eye and John thinks that's a better barometer of what doesn't make it into the intel reports than anything else. 

There are always new people arriving, but there are always old people not returning, too. The losses are small in number, but so is the resistance force. What's left of the SGC has already paid a steep price, but some of these losses cut especially deep in Little Tripoli. Rob Greisz, who went back into the fray joking that his burn scars could help him pass as a prior, is killed in Piraeus while marshaling a riot in a detention camp. Olivia Vega is captured along with four others during a raid of a microprocessor factory in Fujian that turned into a city-wide chase. Mike Lehman, the first commander of the SFs in the city, dies in a firefight in a naquadriah mine on P3S-452 that destroys half the planet. There are Wall Ceremonies in Little Tripoli when they receive confirmation that Christopher Paik, a former platoon commander in Atlantis, was killed flying a sortie against the Ori in California, and then again when they find out that Laura Cadman, promoted to captain after leaving Atlantis to return to scientific research, was captured along with the rest of her team.

The Wraith level Manaria and while John's perfectly willing to let the Manarians rebuild on their own or call on their Genii buddies for help, there is a large Satedan refugee population there now along with a couple of other groups and they don't deserve to starve for their hosts' poor life choices. Atlantis ends up being more generous with labor than material; John agrees with Polito and Ngo that a show of martial force in the form of rotating platoons of marines will remind both Manarians and Genii that picking a fight with Atlantis is unwise. Ngo also suggests sending some of the resting resistance fighters to Manaria to help the medical outreach team -- and spy on the locals. Ronon won't go out there and John flat-out calls him on his cowardice, but it's Teyla who actually gets him through the wormhole after a discussion she won't relate. He comes back looking like he's been through a meat tenderizer, but all he'll tell John is that the Satedans will be happy to play informant for Atlantis because the Manarians are still the kind of hosts that make sure you know that you're an imposition. The Satedans don't want to move -- Manaria is a very good planet in every other way but its people -- but appreciate the offer to relocate. They also appreciate being told about the Genii, who are around Manaria constantly and still pretending to be simple farmers. Teyla thinks that some of the Satedans will be having fun exposing the Genii for what they are and John tells her that he doesn't want them dying for it. 

_Daedalus_ brings a couple of pallets of bicycles and everyone in the city signs up to ride once they are put together. John and Rodney spend an evening with Teyla and Ronon teaching them to ride -- there are training wheels on a couple of the adult bikes -- and it's the most ridiculous fun he's had in years. Ronon objects to the training wheels until the third time he falls ass over teakettle without them, but Teyla's squeal of delight when she rides down the strip without needing them makes a lot of people's night. Both ship's captains have a strong sense of... not whimsy, but of the necessity of expending effort and resources to keep joy in people's lives. Which is why there are always potato chips and sugary cereal and sports equipment on board and why Ellis had _Odyssey_ liberate some of the contents of a Toys'R'Us for Christmas, letting the adults play board board games and hand out stuffed animals to the refugee kids. 

Sam Carter disappears into thin air on Vis Uban and nobody knows what the hell happened, let alone what to do about it. Vis Urban's an Ancient planet and everyone hopes she somehow got ascended and will return with the key to defeating the Ori. But she was dicking around with a device when she vanished and that device, Jonas Quinn tells them, is not Ancient: it's Ori. Who has her -- or if she's still alive at all -- is a mystery nobody can solve and John cuts Rodney off sharply during a meeting when he starts theorizing. John apologizes for the outburst later, but it's just not helpful to anyone in Atlantis to waste energy on what's essentially a thought problem and Rodney's still prone to catastrophizing. Quinn is on Vis Urban trying to get some answers and that will have to do. 

Mitchell, now sole leader of the resistance, believes in maintaining a good attitude in public, but in the privacy of Little Tripoli is where you can see how much all of this is wearing on him. The first Ori priors came to the Milky Way more than three years ago already and Cam's been in action against them for the duration without any real down time. John isn't going to tell him to take a break, but he can ask his own staff officers what they can do to make Mitchell's work easier. Which turns out to be mostly intel collation and supplies, but at least it's something useful. 

The first anniversary of the subjugation of Earth, the prostration at Robler Rock, is a few months away and Elizabeth is quietly arranging a respectful program of what John isn't quite sure. Music, he thinks, maybe art. "Something to honor the solemnity of the day while also emphasizing the importance of what the Ori would banish," is how she puts it in the meeting. He's sure it will be a very tasteful and appropriate middle finger raised to the Ori, but he's not sure he wants to go. 

The event's been put on the city calendar by the afternoon he's sitting in Lorne's office reading Gillick's impressively understated AAR from a mission that involved taking a contingent from Life Sciences on a safari and features surprise tigers. When the phone rings, Lorne answers it, listens, then tells the gateroom officer (the whiteboard calendar says it should be Patchok) to let them in. John doesn't like the look on Evan’s face when he stands up. 

"Mitchell just radioed in from Sipapu and said he needs to visit," he reports. "Didn't say why." 

Sipapu is the planet in Pegasus that's closest to the Milky Way, an uninhabited world that serves as a kind of waystation for the SGC ships so that they don't have to fly all the way across the galaxy to Atlantis. It's been used a few times, but usually in urgent circumstances. _Daedalus_ left six weeks ago and isn't due back for at least that long again and if nobody needs emergency evacuation to the city -- it's a week in hyperspace from Sipapu to Lantea -- then it's bad news that has to be delivered in person. 

"They find Carter?" John asks, standing up as well. "Or Jackson?" 

Daniel Jackson's been missing for more than a year and everyone seems to believe he's been captured instead of killed because of his history with the Ori. That history is also why half of everyone is afraid he's going to come back to them a prior. John's not making any guesses because everything about Jackson and his disappearances and deaths is all kinds of batshit. 

Caldwell is with Mitchell in the gateroom when they get there and Jackson being a prior might be the best case scenario judging by their expressions. Elizabeth is already downstairs and the look on her face says she knows a body blow is coming, too. 

They go into the conference room and close the doors and Caldwell doesn't wait for everyone else to show up. "_Odyssey_ was destroyed thirteen days ago in a fight with the Ori warship _Adash_," he says with a voice that doesn't stay perfectly level. "There were no survivors." 

John's not sure how he reacts; there's a moment of time that's just lost to him because of the impact of the news. Yes, this was a possibility, maybe even a likelihood. But Ellis is -- was -- a fine captain and he'd taken _Odyssey_ into and out of more trouble than could be imagined, navigated a blockade of Earth, avoided pursuit for years, and if it hadn't always been a triumph then at least it hadn't been an unmitigated disaster. This is three steps past that. All of the SGC warships were outclassed by the Ori armadas, but they had better crews -- _Odyssey_ had survived a few battles already, beaten up but still able to fly to safety. John can't imagine what might have happened this time. 

The fuller version of the story comes after Carson, Yoni, Rodney, and Zelenka show up and then John calls for Ngo and Hanzis to bring who and what they need to take notes for 2-Shop because it would be cruel to make Caldwell and Mitchell go through this more than once. _Odyssey_ was ambushed, led into a trap set by mimicking the signature of ha'taks known to belong to the Tok'ra, two of which had been part of the earliest space defenses of the galaxy and one of which had disappeared into hyperspace during a fight and never reappeared. Ellis contacted _Daedalus_ and he and Caldwell debated the likelihood of it being a false flag before agreeing that they had to at least take a look -- the missing ship had had Teal'c's son Rya'c aboard. But instead of finding a ha'tak, _Odyssey_ found herself surrounded by _Adash_ and her convoy of gunships and fighters.

"The Ori weren't interested in prisoners," Caldwell explains. "_Odyssey_ sent off escape pods and they were shot at. _Adash_ refused all hails. So Ellis shut down some critical systems to devote energy to shields and to passing as much data to us as they could. We maintained a link until the shields were breached and _Odyssey_ imploded."

Behind John, he hears Hanzis mutter the Catholic version of the Eternal Rest prayer. 

"We have the ship's final manifest," Mitchell picks up, holding out a portable hard drive that Carson, closest to Mitchell, accepts and passes back until it gets to Ngo. "We know who was on board and we were able to either retrieve or at least contact everyone who wasn't and was expecting to get picked up. Mister Quinn and his people were on Euronda and a couple of small teams were on other planets, but they'll all make their way to Vis Urban and we'll get them there next month."

There's more to be asked and more to be said, but most of it can wait. Ngo carefully asks a few questions that can't wait, mostly about security-related issues -- Charlie's the former commander of SG-14 and was present at the battle where the ha'tak disappeared. Then they offer their apologies and wish Caldwell and Mitchell good luck and are told it may be a few extra months until _Daedalus_ returns to Pegasus because they'll be doing two ships' work now. 

John and Elizabeth walk them back to the gateroom and stay until the wormhole back to Sipapu is established. On the way back up to the conference room, Elizabeth asks Cardejo, the gateroom officer, to call Doctor Fusco and have him come to the conference room. Fusco is the head of Atlantis's chaplaincy; they're all part of G-2, despite the marines being the ones to demand religious services, and John doesn't really see any of them outside of Sunday mornings and when he bumps into someone ministering to the sick in the hospital. 

"What've you got, Charlie?" he asks Ngo once they're back in the conference room waiting for Fusco, who will presumably be consulted about a memorial service. 

"The manifest, as promised, sir," Ngo reports, eyes on his laptop screen. "There's a transcript of the communications between _Odyssey_ and _Daedalus_ along with an audio file. _Odyssey_'s logbook; Colonel Caldwell wrote the final entry. There are half a dozen folders with massive compressed files in them that I'm going to assume for now are the data dump. There is a folder with Colonel Carter's name on it that seems to be a collection of her research and notes on the Ori; they're zipped. And there's a folder named _Daedalus_ that has their manifest and ship's log as well, sir, plus a file with pictures that seem to be official photographs of the crew."

In case they never make it back to Atlantis.

John shakes his head at this quiet request to not be forgotten, a veteran of both sides of that plea. He's grateful that Fusco's appearance gives him a minute to compose himself before thanking Charlie and welcoming Fusco with a nod before returning to his seat. There are times when the danger they face can be ignored and even forgotten, but there are also times when you can do nothing but look it straight in the eyes and acknowledge its presence. 

Fusco's professionalism in the face of loss makes it easier for the rest of them. There'll be a memorial service this evening out on the southeast pier, which has been turned into a park. There will be a mass on Sunday. There'll be a battalion meeting once 2-Shop has unzipped all of the compressed files and can provide a briefing. In the meanwhile, John wants to go for a run but he can't until the everyone he brought from Little Tripoli is tasked and ready to leave him. There's some lingering -- the news has hit all of them hard, the death letter from _Daedalus_ was an unsuspected second blow, and there is comfort in numbers when you all carry identification with your blood type and who gives you last rites around your neck. 

Eventually he gets down to the gyms and out on to the blue track, which is 25K and all but an invitation to be left alone. The news has been announced and there's an undercurrent among the men that John does his best to tune out entirely for the sake of his own peace of mind. 

The memorial is well-attended and mercifully short. The battalion staff meeting is not, but it gets a lot done. Ngo, Hanzis, and their people will have their hands full analyzing _Odyssey_'s legacy of intel and slotting it in with what they have already. There is plenty on the Ori, more than they realized the resistance had built up, but there's also a lot on other things and some items they just can't figure out. There is a list of gate addresses in Carter's files that they don't know what it means until they do: it's a list of planets once held by the Ori before they left Pegasus. They punt marine platoons out to every one to see if there is anything worth investigating and there is, just not what they'd expected -- or feared. Instead of old Ori fortresses, they find a bunch of uninhabited planets which they are prepared to write off until they establish relations with the ones that do have people and find out that they are all mining worlds. So they send geologists back out to the empty planets and Rodney comes into the next command staff meeting practically floating on air because now they have sources for some of the rarer minerals they need to produce all sorts of things Atlantis needs, like high-performance plastics and rechargeable batteries. Having a source is different from having a supply and the gap between them isn't trivial, but it's one worth expending the energy to bridge. Especially because these are materials the Ori and Ancients needed and what they needed them for is relevant as well. 

It's also an excuse for Weapons Company, who double as their combat engineers, to dig out their toy box and go to town and reignite the debate with Science as to what counts as a controlled demolition. 

Atlantis has been growing crops on Ipetia, one of their more reliable allies, and it's their high summer, so the city is overflowing with zucchini and tomatoes and corn. Which in turn leads to industrial-level pressure canning because food security is right up there with military security as far as survival goes. Atlantis has been able to make glass since the first year, but has expanded their capacity since the Ori invaded Earth. There are pressurized glass jars of everything from corn kernels to peach jam to diced tomatoes lining the hallways outside the newest set of kitchens they've opened up, waiting for transport to the pantries. It's an almost entirely refugee-run operation, as is the glassworks, and there's some kind of effort to turn glassware into a cottage industry for export. John's not sure how much of a market there's going to be for delicate vases or decorative pieces in a galaxy that has more people at subsistence level than above it, but Teyla tells him he's being shortsighted. 

_Daedalus_ shows up in Pegasus with everyone they were supposed to retrieve from Vis Urban, plus two hundred refugees they end up dropping off at Sipapu because they are so severely overcrowded that they don't have enough food for the week it will take to get to Atlantis. Mitchell comes with the evacuees and explains how they ended up with folks from seven different worlds, including an unusually high number of unaccompanied minors, and six American marines and one Filipino one. The half-dozen Migrating Chimps will make everyone's day in Little Tripoli; the Corps isn't so large that all of them won't find friends and former unit-mates in the barracks. The bulk of the refugees are families who'll be inprocessed by Teyla and her new assistant, Army Corporal Waterman, who is on day release from the hospital after sufficiently recovering from both finger and hand amputations. The unaccompanied kids aren't a problem until they are -- Pegasus is more than used to orphans from the Wraith and adoption is not only common but expected. However, most of these kids are from _Earth,_ which has never happened before. 

"We stumbled onto an Ori orphanage outside of San Antonio," Mitchell tells him in a tone of voice that has John turning to look at him from where he was watching the cramped moshpit by the stargate. Cam rarely, if ever, sounds so furious and yet so controlled. His voice is quiet but his eyes are blazing and this is the leader of the Milky Way's rebel force, not the good-natured ex-jet jockey he'd once been and sometimes still can be. "Most of the kids are from Greater San Antonio, but the rest are from Corpus Christi and Mexico. The others are from Rolan or Edora. None of them are even ten and they all know that their parents are dead. Most of them watched them die and half of them think that they are to blame for it." 

John can only nod because what the hell can you say to that? "We'll do right by them," he promises, although he's not sure how that will happen in any kind of practical sense. They'll figure something out, though. Atlantis has a daycare and a maternity leave policy because babies have been born in the city to Earth personnel and most of the refugee women who work in the city have kids. There's been talk of an elementary school -- the older kids sit with the adults in the English literacy classes they run. He supposes they'll have to do more than talk now. 

In the meanwhile, getting the kids fed and finding them somewhere to play outside after spending at least a few weeks in a spaceship is the best possible plan and John calls up to the control room to get Carlson to find someone to escort them to the commissary. Someone turns out to be Gunny Ojeda and Staff Sergeant Fiffe's squad, since wrangling children is not unlike wrangling cats and the more the better. But everyone has a laugh when Gunnery Sergeant Chow, one of the new arrivals, whistles and all of the kids, even the ones not from Earth, line up in two rows, hold hands like it is an elementary school field trip, and then march off to a G-rated version of one of the cadences heard daily in Little Tripoli. 

"You couldn't teach them one of ours?" he asks Mitchell. "Old King Cole or something?" 

"I lost that battle before I knew there was one." Mitchell makes a face, but then smiles. "But what will the airmen be crying for in your version? Milk?" 

Elizabeth, who'd been off in G-2 doing whatever when the call from Sipapu came in, gets to the gateroom just as the children are leaving and watches them go with a stunned look on her face, as much for the scene as for the kids very obviously wearing Earth clothing. Teyla and Waterman have already started inprocessing the others, which more or less boils down to getting everyone's personal information and asking the adults what kind of skills they have. Elizabeth stops by Teyla first for a quick word, then wades through the still-overcrowded gateroom floor to John and Mitchell, pausing to welcome newcomers to Atlantis as she does. 

"This is certainly a motley crew," she says lightly in greeting, but John and presumably Mitchell can see that her expression is serious. The explanation for the children and other refugees is less charged this time, but Elizabeth nods gravely and reiterates John's promise to do whatever they can for the kids. They don't discuss details, more general plans for everyone and then what and who is aboard _Daedalus_ and what will happen when they dock next week. 

After Teyla calls Mitchell over to help with something, Elizabeth turns to John. "This is not going to be easy news to digest," she says. "These children are going to confirm some of our worst fears and I don't know how we can mitigate that. Or if we even should.

"It's one thing to understand, in some vague way, that Earth is now under the Ori's control. It's something else to see how that control has manifested. To be so bluntly reminded that the Ori are not an army of occupation, they are an army of elimination. And that we have lost so much more than territory or treasure... " 

She trails off and shakes her head, then looks up at him with the same grim, determined smile he's known since Antarctica. The one that gave him enough faith to follow her through a wormhole on a one-way trip to another galaxy. 

"Let's see about accommodations," she tells him. "We should ask Colonel Mitchell what the children have been accustomed to aboard _Daedalus_."

Which John takes as a request to ask, which he does a little later. Turns out the kids have been puppy-piling on blankets in a couple of aft missile rooms, which is good because they might end up doing the same in Atlantis for a few nights. They don't have much in the way of bedding for the adults, either, but that's not John's department. He ends up escorting the new military personnel out to Little Tripoli where the American marines are treated like long-lost brothers and the Filipino one, Sergeant Masipag, like a long-lost cousin from the moment the transporter doors open in front of the guard desk. John leaves them in the hands of Master Sergeant Friedland, who is both S-1 (Personnel) on the org chart and currently the senior enlisted man in Atlantis and thus everyone they need all in one uniform.

By the time _Daedalus_ shows up, they've got the kids on a manageable routine even if they are still puppy-piling in two connected rooms in one of the civilian residence towers come bedtime. The ship is carrying a collection of stolen merchandise that's as random as the refugees. There's an industrial washing machine, some component of a thing that makes microprocessors (he's a little vague on the details there), five hundred pairs of sneakers, and parts of a half-dozen Goa'uld weapons among other things. Many of the smaller other things are Ori-related, technology and weapons and schematics acquired by Quinn and his people. 

The usual routine of meetings and discussions is then performed: what Atlantis needs, what it _wants_, what Mitchell and his people need, what _Daedalus_ needs... it's essential and boring and John tries to pay more attention than he usually does during command staff meetings because there's a lot less room for recovery if he misses something and it's not fair to Lorne to essentially have the fate of the free world on his shoulders because his CO has no attention span. 

The kids are found homes, mostly within the city but quite a few on the mainland -- the younger ones aren't as acculturated to American ways and standards and the transition won't be as difficult for them as for the older ones. All of them will get schooling, though; they are American or Mexican citizens and if (when) Earth is liberated and they have a chance to return, their options shouldn't be limited by their inability to function in their native environments. This leads to opening up education to all of the children, regardless of planet of birth or even galaxy. Teyla insists that nobody thinks the Lanteans are being biased or imperialist by giving Earth people more protection or better accommodation, but John sees how the Athosians act now that they are sharing their children with other peoples and there is a change. Of course, that difference could just be relief -- Halling tells Yoni who tells Carson who tells everyone at the command staff meeting that the Athosians believed that Earth people are mostly sterile because how could so many be here for so long with only two children born and only in the last year? 

The cycle continues: _Daedalus_ leaves, attention shifts back to Pegasus, _Daedalus_ arrives with people (always more children; raiding orphanages is now a priority) and things and news and Atlantis absorbs all of it with various degrees of difficulty. Atlantis's aegis grows, as does the fear that the Ori will turn their attention to Pegasus -- Mitchell has HUMINT that it's on the agenda, just not when. They wind up with tomato plants in the hallways again after BioEngineering does something unwise in the building they're using for hydroponics. Ronon shoots a Genii on Manaria for assaulting a Satedan and there's a three-week window when Atlantis is on a war footing. Jonas Quinn brings back a functional Ori generator and Engineering acts like it's Christmas until they realize that they can't reverse engineer it without taking it apart and they can't take it apart without it exploding until Quinn and his team get back. 

Quinn and his team nearly don't make it back. It's a peaceful Sunday afternoon and Atlantis is as off-duty as it gets when John gets a call from the gateroom that they've got an emergency hail from _Daedalus_ calling in from Sipapu. It's not even _Daedalus_, it's one of the F-302 pilots who has used her hyperdrive to get to Sipapu to call in. The law of averages has kicked in and _Daedalus_ ran into an Ori fleet; the only reason they didn't meet the same fate as _Odyssey_ is that Hermiod, Doctor Novak, and Quinn kludged together a bypass to get the hyperdrive working again long enough for _Daedalus_ to portal out of trouble. But the bypass came with consequences and between the resulting explosion and the casualties from the Ori attack, _Daedalus_ is barely running with a skeleton crew and while Caldwell is pretty sure he can get the ship into Pegasus, he's not sure he can get it to Sipapu, let alone Atlantis. There's too much damage and too many casualties and not enough of anyone who can treat either. 

John tells the pilot -- a Captain Swinson -- to call back in half an hour (after first verifying that she can wait that long) and they'll have a plan for her to bring back to Caldwell. Elizabeth, standing next to him, has already gestured to Lieutenant Biswas to summon the necessary parties. John tells Osgney, the platoon commander on QRF duty, to get a picnic basket from the commissary and get his Corpsman out to Sipapu and see to Swinson, who will need company even if she doesn't need medical attention or want a snack.

Rodney and Zelenka need less than five minutes to come up with the nearest stargate to where _Daedalus_ is on course to end up. Sipapu is the closest planet to the Milky Way, but there's actually a space gate that's closer. If _Daedalus_ can't get to Sipapu or, as Rodney brings up, can't _land_ on Sipapu because of the damage, then parking by the space gate and having Atlantis run the jumpers out to the ship is the next best thing. _Daedalus_ has two of Atlantis's jumpers aboard, if they're still flight-capable, which makes eight ships. They dial the space gate and send Eriksson, the pilot on call, out to make sure that there's nothing worrisome out there, before a patched-up and fed Swinson calls back in. 

The next fifteen hours are controlled chaos in the city. Rodney and his people work out trajectories and back-up plans and other things John doesn't understand and can't focus on because he's got other things to do. Medical needs to first set up the hospital (and the morgue) to accept mass casualties and then divvy up who is going to do what where. Carson has to be a pilot -- they just don't have enough other gene carriers who can fly well enough to land the jumper on _Daedalus_'s flight deck without autopilot. Patchok's platoon is on night shift this week and someone has to go wake up Staff Sergeant Reletti for the same reason. John, Lorne, Eriksson, and Cardejo will fly the others. They have two PJs and pick out four Corpsmen to ride in the back and free up the doctors for more complicated work; they'll send two platoons out with the jumpers to be able-bodied men aboard _Daedalus_, which doesn't have many. When the call comes in, they're ready to go. 

John goes first since he's got Safir, who will stay aboard _Daedalus_ to do triage, along with Osgeny and half of his platoon. When they come through and John banks into a sharp turn so that they can get to _Daedalus_ hiding behind the stargate, Osgeny, riding shotgun, speaks for them all when he first sees the ship. 

"Holy fuck!"

_Daedalus_ is a floating wreck and that's being generous. It's a hunk of swiss cheese, pockmarked and punctured, and there are scorch marks all around the hull as well as signs of explosive decompression. John doesn't take a tour around the ship to see all of the damage because time is of the essence and there are wounded to tend to, but he wants to because he honestly can't understand how _Daedalus_ is still functional. He knows this ship better than he did the others because of the virus misadventure and that makes its survival all the more marvelous to him. 

He follows the plane director's signals to where they want him to land, but there's plenty of space to park. There are two F-302s on the starboard flight deck when there should be eight. The two jumpers that were already aboard _Daedalus_ are getting loaded. 

He drops the ramp and everyone exits while he waits in the cockpit; there is no time to take a tour of the inside or talk to Caldwell or anything else. There are gurneys lined up and he can hear Yoni directing the _Daedalus_'s medical personnel as well as HM2 Stohr, who came with the jumper. They can stabilize four gurneys in the back with chocks and take three walking wounded and Stohr has everyone aboard and secured in five minutes, during which time Lorne's jumper has come in for a landing. (Lorne's landings are smoother than his; John used to drive helos and Evan used to drive refuelers and this is where it shows.) John waits for the signal to raise the ramp and then taxis over to where the yellow-vested sailor wants him to wait. All six jumpers have to come through before they can close the wormhole; John gets permission to go just as Cardejo, in fifth position, is visible on approach. He dials Atlantis and transmit's his IDC as he arcs into the turn toward the stargate and it's essentially automatic from there. __

Back in Atlantis he'll have a few minutes before he can head back out, so once it's clear to exit the jumper and the patients are away, he pops down to the gateroom to update Elizabeth in person. Rodney's still in the control room and John waves for him to join them. 

"_Daedalus_ is scrap metal held together by force of will," he tells them. "I don't know how the hell it survived hyperspace. I don't know how it hasn't imploded just sitting there." 

Engineering is going to have to provide tech support on site, which they suspected would be the case but here is John confirming that and suggesting that Rodney come out to the ship to better assess what they'll need to do to get _Daedalus_ closer to Atlantis. 

There's a discussion about what else about their support plan has to be modified now that they can see the true extent of the damage, but John ducks out of it once he sees Reletti's jumper rising from the gateroom up to the bay. Reletti's sixth in line and that means the two jumpers that were already on board _Daedalus_ won't be far behind and then it will be time to go back out. 

The jumper bay is alive with activity. The orderlies are running the gurneys to the transporter and then collecting the less critically wounded, the jumper techs are doing their pit crew thing, and the pilots are taking a minute to stretch their legs. John makes a quick circuit to check on his pilots -- especially Carson and Reletti, the two least used to flying, and Captains Vidaurri and Chau, the two _Daedalus_-based pilots, neither of whom are uninjured themselves. 

Cam Mitchell's on one of the gurneys waiting for the transporter, but John honestly wouldn't have realized it if every patient didn't have a piece of paper attached to their blanket with their names in large print and medical shorthand underneath. (There's a joke to be made about Safir's handwriting, but it will keep.) Mitchell is unrecognizable under a thick mask of drying blood and with the bruising distorting his features; his neck and shoulders are tightly wrapped like a mummy, but there's already blood seeping through. There's a lot of blood seeping through everywhere and John reminds himself that these are the worst cases and not everyone has been so gravely wounded. Still, it's Mitchell and his position within the rebellion makes his survival and recovery matter. And if Cam's not quite a friend, he's adjacent enough to the position that John would feel the loss personally. 

The last thing he sees before getting clearance to start liftoff procedures is one of the corpsmen gently carrying a tiny body wrapped in a bloody blanket. 

The round robin round trips go on. First it's the wounded being brought to Atlantis, then it's more people and equipment heading out to _Daedalus_, then the rest of the refugees being evacuated back to Atlantis. John has to take himself out of the rotation for a bit after he brings Elizabeth out -- Caldwell won't leave the ship for obvious reasons -- for the discussion about what happens next.

The goal is to get _Daedalus_ and her people to Atlantis, but in what order that's accomplished is yet to be determined. Rodney thinks it will take about ten days of solid work to get _Daedalus_ on the move again; the ship's defensive shields are shot to shit but there's enough left to salvage into a shield strong enough to withstand both hyperspace travel and breaching Lantea's atmosphere to land by the city. Rodney sounds like he's downplaying the danger of what he's planning, which John is sure Elizabeth can recognize but isn't sure Caldwell can. But there are no real alternatives: it's six days of hyperspace travel from here to Atlantis and a ridiculous number of light years if they go the old-fashioned way. They can't fix most of the damage at all right now, but what they can do can't be done in space. The ship's crew can't stay aboard indefinitely because too many of the critical systems, including life support, are damaged. Nobody's even considering abandoning the ship. 

John excuses himself to get back to the jumper rotation; his presence here isn't as necessary as it is on the flight deck. Especially because they need to start keeping an eye out for pilot fatigue -- it's been hours of backing-and-forthing and even if the Atlantis part is on autopilot, the rest is not. He finds the Air Boss and tells him that he wants Vidaurri and Chau to stand down after their next trips; they can go back to their berths aboard _Daedalus_ or they can doze in Atlantis, but they will rest. He doesn't think eight pilots are as necessary as they were during the shuttling of urgent casualties and they can probably drop down to four or even two once everyone's had a chance for a break. But Vidaurri and Chau are injured and they've had a long couple of weeks and they go first. 

He tries to stay in the rotation as long as he can, let the others take breaks first, but once Elizabeth is back in Atlantis and Caldwell sends his XO, Hawerchuk, along with her, it's only a matter of time before he's going to have to sit in a conference room instead of a cockpit and Lorne's in the same boat. He has face-to-face conversations with both Cardejo and Eriksson to judge their fatigue levels; both of them say they're fine, which is predictable, but they don't look that kind of half-a-beat-off that would have had John grounding everyone immediately. As it is, he lets Carson and Reletti go -- Yoni's been back in Atlantis for hours already and is running things just fine, but Carson's more needed in Medical right now and Reletti is operating on practically zero sleep. He tells Cardejo and Eriksson that they're not doing any pleasure cruises and unless it's a necessary trip -- actually necessary, not what the scientists tend to say is necessary but is really optional -- they have permission to tell everyone to wait. 

On the way to the gateroom, he runs into Captain Swinson, the 302 pilot who started this adventure by calling in from Sipapu. She's got her casted left arm in a sling and a bandage covering her left eye that still exposes what look like barely-scabbed-over shrapnel wounds on her face, none of which had so much as come up earlier and makes John wonder what the other 302 pilots look like -- or if any are still alive. She's in Atlantis as one of the wounded, here for an ophthalmology consult, and has been given a room in the section of the residential building they'd cleared out the other day, but not a good set of directions how to get there. He sets the transporter for her -- and then turns down her offer to fly a jumper if needed. 

Science takes the lead at the meetings to figure out what to do about _Daedalus_, which in turn means figuring out what the ship's science team had done to get her as far as the edge of Pegasus. Nobody who did the work is able to speak for it: Hermiod was killed in the explosion while Novak and Quinn are in Atlantis's hospital, the former in a medically-induced coma and the latter recovering from extensive time on Grebner's operating table getting his jaw and orbital bones put back together. Rodney's already got a fairly good idea, however, and has tasked relevant people to come up with a safer way to repeat the effective part while better containing the explosion.

"They jury-rigged a combustion engine," Rodney tells the first person to ask if the explosion part can be done away with entirely. "So, no." 

Back in Little Tripoli, John and Lorne sit with Polito and Sato to overhaul both the marines' and SF's schedules to allow Atlantis's obligations to be met while still providing _Daedalus_ with the extra manpower it needs. They also have to figure out a burial detail; Hawerchuk and Caldwell both indicated that they thought a burial at sea would be the least distressing option -- _Daedalus_ lost people to hull breaches and the idea of leaving any more bodies to float in the void is a horrifying one. An actual ceremony can wait, but the burials might not because neither Atlantis's morgue nor the ship's are built to store so many dead and there aren't enough body bags. They don't have a fixed total yet because there is still recovery going on aboard ship -- they want it to be search-and-rescue, but at this point it's not likely -- and there are several patients in Atlantis's hospital whose survival is not assured. Nonetheless, Polito will send marines out to the market worlds to get cloth and Sato will liaise with the refugee-run tailor shop about having them turned into shrouds and then finding the weights to drag the bodies down. 

When the time comes, they have to split the job over four days. Each body gets a burial with full military honors: a flag of their nation if Atlantis has it or a pennant from _Daedalus_ if they don't as well as an honor guard to the east pier where they are committed to the deep one by one after one of the chaplain says some words. Doing them all at once would take hours and turn farcical, but stretching it out is just making the hurt last longer. Caldwell stands at the end of the pier for it all and it's not until the third day that John realizes that he is telling each of his fallen crew that they have stood their final watch and are relieved of duty. By the end, the _Daedalus_ crew was -- and still is -- mostly Navy personnel and ran mostly by naval routines for the same reason Little Tripoli is a USMC base.

It takes the better part of a month to get _Daedalus_ itself to Atlantis and a few people mention that she's just the last body that they'll give to the sea. Science manages to keep her afloat, though, and moored next to the south pier. It's visible from the windows near the control room and from what everyone in the gateroom calls the "bickering balcony," which is where John and Elizabeth go to have arguments unobserved. 

Today, though, they are not so much as exchanging cross words, instead just watching the parade of scientists and their minions look like busy ants marching up and down the pier. 

"I know we have to prepare for the inevitable," Elizabeth says quietly. "But I don't want Atlantis to feel like we're already under siege. The Ori will come, but I want us to live as a free people until that happens." 

It's not a response to anything John or his people have done or not done or even will do, just a reaction to the change in circumstances finally starting to resonate. With _Daedalus_ now a work site, they're cut off from the Milky Way, no idea of what's going on there and with no warning for when the Ori turn their eyes to Pegasus. This is just reality striking bone. 

"We've been here before," he says. He knows she remembers the first year too well, when they were overmatched and overwhelmed and cut off from Earth and living in fear of an inevitable Wraith invasion. Her words are as much a comment on that as their current situation. "We'll be better at it this time." 


End file.
